Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-030100 discloses a dispensing apparatus wherein any of three different levels of authorization, which are general user, manager, and serviceman, is preset to determine operator's identification information, the apparatus receiving the operator's ID inputted thereto and permitting the operator to carry out functions allowed for the authorization level corresponding to the inputted ID. It is further described in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-030100 that the technique disclosed therein is applicable to analyzing apparatuses as well as dispensing apparatuses.
The dispensing apparatus permits the operator to execute functions allowed for general user when an ID having the general user's authorization level preset therein is inputted, permits the operator to execute functions allowed for manager and general user when an ID having the manager's authorization level preset therein is inputted, and permits the operator to execute functions allowed for manager, general user, and serviceman when an ID having the serviceman's authorization level preset therein is inputted. The operator, who is given the ID having the serviceman's authorization level preset therein, performs an operation check of the apparatus as a routine maintenance work to confirm whether or not the apparatus is normally operating based on an operation history thereby obtained.
The general user and the manager are operators who belong to a facility where the dispensing apparatus is installed. The serviceman is an operator who works for a vender who delivered the dispensing apparatus to the facility.
In a case where the technique described in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-030100 is applied to an analyzing apparatus, the serviceman performs an analysis using a control specimen as a part of the maintenance work, and confirms whether or not the analyzing apparatus is normally operating by confirming an analysis result thus obtained. However, the analysis result of the control specimen thus generated by the maintenance work is unnecessary information for operators on the facility side. Therefore, the serviceman has to take an additional step of deleting the analysis result generated by the maintenance work after the maintenance is completed so that no operator on the facility side accesses the unnecessary information.